Nick Dubaz writes in to comment on the present status of the effort to destroy the LRA:
The Ugandan Army has strengthened significantly with U.S. assistance, Southern Sudan has increased their efforts against the LRA and there has been some reform of the IDP camp system. As a result, the LRA has been forced to operate largely in the DR Congo and Southern Sudan and has little reach into Uganda, at least partially achieving Uganda's strategic goals in the conflict.
I've followed some of these developments as well, and I should have included some information about the present state of the effort in my Kony post--which was mainly historical in its look at the sources of his success (as was the FMSO paper). Kony's range of operations has indeed shrunk since the high point of the violence. Still, joint military operations to capture him have been miserable failures and coordination is difficult.
As the International Crisis Group notes, the main problem is coordinating a war effort across three countries. Kony's operations are a case study in the power of foot mobility and distributed operations in African jungle terrain in loose borders. As per my reference to Lettow-Vorbeck in a previous post, footmobile operations in jungle warfare is a hitherto understudied contemporary subject. It is not as much guerrilla warfare in the sense of politics but a techno-tactical thing that the Vietcong and NVA mastered. A small group of fighters can cover a large distance if light on their feet, and effectively challenge superior conventional forces for effective control of the countryside. There have been many studies on it during the Vietnam era, but none recently due to operations in desert conditions, urban warfare, and mountains in Kuwait, Iraq, Chechnya, and Afghanistan. The neglect of this subject may be lamented later on, however.
The ICG report is titled "A Regional Strategy Beyond Killing Kony," but that is essentially what it is. Consolidating regional operational capabilities, protecting civilians, and gaining strike intelligence as well as progressively narrowing the range of ground the LRA can occupy. While it also recommends addressing the root causes of violence in Northern Uganda, that is a more long-term task that military forces (and the UN's regional forces) are not really well-equipped to do. It is a task that only regional leaders can do. For now, the immediate military problem of the degradation and destruction of the LRA is the most pressing issue.
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